Oh, Autumn. The changing of the leaves, the crispness of the morning air... and the crunching of numbers?

Yep. We're bankers. It's what we do. And fall, it's the perfect time for some of our favorite - and most crucial - banking activities.

Here are the 3 game-changing activities Plansmith recommends starting as early as possible in the fall:

• Set Goals that are aggressive yet attainable.
• Create a Financial plan that reflects, monitors, and adapts to change.
• Design a Budget Playbook of action items that must take place in order to be successful.
  

1. Set Goals

Goals - whether strategic, annual, quarterly, or otherwise - are kept as rock solid keys to the success of the institution itself. They are most often unique to your organization, but too often kept internally between upper management and the board. We suggest you broaden your goal setting to include all individuals and departments that may influence reaching these goals, which means just about everyone!

Now that you’ve established where you’d like the organization to go, it’s time to form a financial plan that demonstrates how you’ll achieve it. Growth, pricing, other income generation, and expense control are all vital parts of your financial map. Most of us start here then figure out how we’ll get to our numbers. However, if you begin with a corporate plan of action, or budget playbook, the numbers will follow suit. For example, you may feel you can’t grow loans without forfeiture of interest rates, or can you? By developing an action plan to seek out targeted markets, you can experiment through the use of a financial model to find the proper balance between growth, offering rates, and the overhead costs associated with accumulating that business.

Easier said than done you say, and I might agree had I not experienced the power of developing a playbook firsthand. A budget playbook takes your goals to a whole new level by describing what actionable activities need to take place to reach these goals. They should be easily shared and monitored on a regular basis. A budget playbook sets direction, assigns responsibilities, and greatly increases your chances for successful goal execution.

So, take your time and don’t put the cart before the horse. Stay true to these key plan development suggestions and your numbers should “fall” into place.

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